Steam is successful for one incredibly funny reason, expert reveals

If you own a Steam account, you are almost definitely guilty of one of the seven deadly sins– and one expert thinks that sin is exactly why Valve has managed to make so much bank off of the storefront.

According to Statista, as of 2024 Valve has sold somewhere around 700 million games through the Steam storefront. Back in 2021, it was reported that they made roughly 2 billion dollars in revenue through the storefront.

So, how are they doing it? Why is Steam supposedly thriving, while other PC-specific storefronts such as the Epic Games Store are not?

Well, according to games marketing analyst Chris Zukowski (per a report by GamesRadar+’s Austin Wood), the answer is pretty simple: "The power of Steam as a platform is that it enables hoarding.”

“The reason game developers are willing to give Valve 30% of their revenue is because the Steam marketplace is packed with super gamers who throw money at games they have no intention of playing,” Zukowski revealed.

“When I ran a survey of games that participated in Steam Next Fest, I found that for the median game most people only wishlist a game without even playing the demo. THE DEMO IS FREE! If players are so interested in the game, why don’t they play it!”

Zukowski also stated a piece of info that I’m all pretty sure we already know, but is still funny to see confirmed: roughly half of your average Steam owner’s library is comprised of games they’ve never actually played.

However, I do think there’s one other reason for Steam’s massive success that Zukowski only lightly touches upon in his report.

Why exactly is everyone choosing to use Steam as their only PC storefront of choice? Why collate all of your unplayed games there, when there are several other PC-specific storefronts you could also horde on?

I think there are three reasons, and they’re all pretty simple.

Firstly, people trust Valve. They’ve proven time and time again that they’re willing to listen to the people who use their service, and they’ve earned a lot of goodwill over the years as a result.

Secondly, they have the best sales. Admittedly, their sales used to be better, but that doesn’t change the fact that they still have the biggest discounts.

And finally, the most important bit… they’ve been around for a long time.

Steam has been allowing users to purchase third-party games since 2005. For many, that’s resulted in a digital library of games that stretches back 20 years.

At this point, even if Steam completely went to the dogs, I think it’s a sunk cost fallacy kind of thing. I mean, where else am I going to keep all of my thousands of unplayed games?